The Last Embrace

by Denise Hamilton

  “Hello,” she said, walking up. The girl put down a bottle of witch hazel and began applying whitestick under the man’s puffy eyes. “I’m a friend of Kitty Hayden’s family,” Lily went on. “I wonder if I might speak to you.”

  The girl popped a bubble of chewing gum. She moistened an eyebrow pencil between her lips and began to thicken the man’s brows. Busy with his paper, the man didn’t look up.

  Lily thought maybe the girl hadn’t heard.

  “Excuse me,” she said. “I was wondering—”

  The girl stepped back to examine her handiwork. Her eyes flickered over Lily. She carefully placed the pencil back and picked up a grease stick.

  “Sure, I knew Kitty,” she said at last. “Great gal. We’re all in shock.”

  “Thank you. What’s your name, by the way?”

  “Marion Szabo.” The girl wiped her hand on her smock, extended it. They shook hands. “Pleased to meet you. I’m Lily Kessler. Did you ever do Kitty’s makeup?”

  The girl put down the grease stick. The man unfolded his paper and made a notation in the margin.

  “She usually did her own,” Marion said. “But sometimes she’d borrow a lipstick.”

  “Did she ever talk about boyfriends? Any problems?”

  “Not that I recall. I hope they find the sicko who did this to her,” Marion said.

  “Me too. What about this other girl, Florence Kwitney?”

  “Never heard of her. You know what I think?” Marion leaned in. “They should take another look at that special effects guy. I heard he’s a little cuckoo.”

  “Was she afraid of him?”

  “Honey, I don’t know. I’m just saying.”

  Just then, another makeup artist rushed past with the metal box that held the tools of their trade. “Soundstage Five,” she told Marion. “They need us on the double.”

  Lily said good-bye and moved on. Some girls were eager to chat. Others scurried away when they heard Kitty’s name. Lily didn’t hear anything new. Walking through Wardrobe an hour later, she stopped before a girl who was picking apart the seam on a satin bodice stitched with tiny seed pearls.

  Lily leaned against the table. “That’s absolutely gorgeous,” she said. “A girl could get married in a gown like that.”

  The seamstress gave a faint snicker. “First comes love, then comes marriage…”

  “Then comes the mama with a baby carriage,” Lily said, supplying the last line.

  “Seems one of our leading ladies forgot the middle part,” the seamstress said, giving the thread a savage tug. “I have to let her dress out.”

  Lily grew very still. Trying to remember. Dresses, seams. She was in Kitty’s bedroom, holding a sundress after the police had searched the room. The seam was strained. Darts had been let out. Then Red had snatched it out of her hand.

  “Pregnant,” Lily said out loud.

  “Not for long,” the seamstress said in a sly voice.

  Lily studied her. “Where would you…? I mean, if you had a problem that…” Lily’s hand made a curving motion over her belly.

  The girl’s eyes narrowed. “I’m sure I don’t know,” she said, suddenly prim. “Who are you anyway, and what’s your business here, asking all these questions?”

  “I’m a friend of…” Lily bit her tongue, realizing that the other seamstresses had begun to listen. She felt the temperature plummet. “I was just wondering if—”

  “I have work to do,” the seamstress said, ducking her head as a woman with dyed red hair and a brisk manner strode into the room. The other girls bent their heads too. As the woman approached with an inquisitory look, Lily hurried through Wardrobe and back outside.

  “Hey,” she heard a woman call behind her. “Wait a minute.”

  Lily hunched her shoulders and kept going.

  “I’d like to talk to you,” the voice said, closer now. A hand grabbed her. Lily whirled around, desperate to think up a new lie. And saw Marion Szabo.

  “I was hoping to run into you,” the makeup girl said. “I remembered something. A few months back I ran into Kitty in the commissary and she was giggling like she’d had too much champagne. Floating on air. She asked if I could keep a secret, then told me she had a new beau. Someone she called ‘the Big K.’”

  Relieved excitement flooded through Lily. “Have you spoken to the police?”

  Marion shrank back. “No one’s come to ask me about Kitty.”

  “Did she tell you his name?”

  “No.”

  “Was it serious?”

  “I asked her. She said, ‘No, it’s not serious, Marion, but it sure is a lot of fun.’”

  Lily took a deep breath. “Did Kitty ever hint that she might be pregnant?”

  An alarmed look crossed Marion’s face. “We weren’t that close, just to say hi and—”

  “But let’s say a girl did get into trouble, where would she go?”

  Through the grapevine, every girl at the studio probably knew exactly where to find the abortionist, how much he charged, even how to get the cash in a hurry. There were things a desperate girl could do. What did it matter, one last time?

  “I’ve really got to go,” Marion said, inching away.

  “Please,” Lily said. “I’m trying to find Kitty’s killer.”

  “I don’t see how…”

  The girl was frightened. But she knew, Lily could almost see the address floating there behind her eyes. She had to make it okay for her to tell.

  “Look, I know you’re not the kind of girl who’d ever get herself into a bind like that. But what if this guy who did the operation is a butcher? What if he had something to do with Kitty’s murder? A guy like that ought to be put away so he can’t hurt other girls, don’t you think?”

  Marion Szabo bit her lip and looked away. Lily got out a pencil and a piece of paper.

  “You don’t need to say anything, just write it down. I won’t reveal where I got it. Promise.”

  A moment later, Lily hugged her and said good-bye, a scrawled address tucked securely into her pocketbook.

  Lily picked her way back to the Special Effects hangar. Just outside Max’s office, she heard a man say, “Show some imagination, for god’s sake.”

  “It’s because of my imagination that I can’t do it, Mr. Sullivan.”

  Walking in, Lily saw Max and another man examining a terrarium. Amid the rocks and dirt were two lizards, the kind that sun themselves on every L.A. hillside. Someone had painted blue and red stripes down one lizard and green and purple spots on the other. Lizard One also had an Elizabethan collar around his neck and a spiky club at the end of his tail. Lizard Two sported metallic spikes down his back and horns. Lily could see the white dots of dried Elmer’s glue where the reptiles had been modified.

  The man in the suit turned to Lily.

  “Don’t you think they look like dinosaurs? All he has to do is rile them up a little so they’ll fight. Shave eighty thousand dollars off production costs, just like that.”

  Red blotches were visible on Max’s high, pale forehead. He compressed his lips. “I can’t do it, Mr. Sullivan.”

  “Why not?” The man was apoplectic. “I’ve done all the prep work already, you lazy sonovabitch.”

  A vein began to throb at Max’s temple. Lily remembered him explaining the weeks of painstaking sketches, the building of the armature, the search for the perfect fur or skin, the obsessive detail and love lavished on his creatures. She wondered how much of Max’s soul got whittled away with each of these battles, how long before hunger won out over creative pride. Or did these high-strung artists just crack?

  “Because they’re lizards,” Max said.

  The man couldn’t believe his ears. “Of course they’re lizards. Dinosaurs were lizards too.”

  Max gazed at the terrarium. One hand went out. Lily saw his long delicate fingers twitch. He had the hands of an artist. She imagined those hands holding a length of fine wire, stretching it taut. The deft way he’d wrap each end
around those ink-stained fingers, the look of intense concentration on his face, much like the one he wore now.

  “But lizards can’t move the way I want them to,” Max said, his voice low. “They can’t show anger, fear, hunger, greed, malice. They’ve got no personality.”

  “Personality?” screamed the producer. “We’re talking about a fucking dinosaur movie.”

  Max didn’t say anything. He heaved up the terrarium and brought it down on the producer’s head.

  Dirt, rocks, reptiles, and shattered glass rained down. The producer let out a cry—half gasp, half scream—as blood flowed from his forehead. He backed away slowly, raw fear in his eyes.

  “You belong in a cage, you know that, buddy?” He spit out bits of glass. “They told me you were temperamental, but you’re off-your-rocker dangerous.”

  Max dusted his hands, squatted, and picked up a shard of the terrarium glass. It glinted in the light. He straightened, pointed it at the producer, and said, “Get out of my office, you fat prick.”

  “Jesus Christ,” the producer yelped, running away.

  The door slammed. Lily heard a clink as the shard of glass hit the floor. The animator sagged into a chair. He gave a low moan and passed one hand across his forehead as if he couldn’t believe what he’d just done.

  “You could have killed him,” Lily said, recalling the red haze in Max’s eyes right before he exploded. Now she saw only a spent, bewildered man. It was like he was two different people.

  “They’ll fire you,” she said.

  He laughed, a queer light suffusing his face. “They can’t afford to.”

  “Why not?”

  The animator pushed himself out of the chair and walked over to the closet, where he got out a broom and dustpan and began sweeping up the mess.

  “Because I make them a lot of money,” Max said, his voice a curious mix of boasting and loathing. “Haven’t you heard? After Willis O’Brien and Ray Harryhausen, I’m the best trick man in the business.”

  Lily wondered if Max had killed Kitty and the studio had covered it up. The phone rang, startling them both.

  “This is Doris. Mr. Rhodes would like to see you in his office right away,” a female voice announced.

  Max turned, making it difficult for Lily to hear the rest of their conversation.

  “Who was that?” Lily asked when he hung up.

  “She works for the director of Studio Security.”

  Lily wondered why Max didn’t look worried. “I told you. That producer ran right over there and complained.”

  Max waved away her protests with a languid hand. “It’s only a few scrapes. Let him take his piece-of-shit idea to one of the B outfits, I don’t need him. Besides”—Max examined Lily—“that’s not why they called. Doris said I’m supposed to bring the girl who’s been roaming around asking questions.”

  Lily’s stomach plummeted. They must have spies on the lot. Or had Myra reported her?

  “The studios are paranoid,” Max explained as they walked over. “Anytime anyone gets killed, it’s bad publicity. The almighty Hays Code.”

  “Wasn’t he some congressman?”

  “Will Hays founded the Production Code, which lays out what can be shown on screen.” He ticked it off. “No immorality, adultery, homosexuality, drug use. The villain must pay. Good must triumph.”

  “What does that have to do with a murdered starlet?”

  “The ‘morals’ clause. Actors sign contracts promising not to do anything immoral.”

  “How ridiculous. Hollywood is rife with sex, drugs, and excess.”

  “It’s hypocritical, I know. But the studios are terrified the government will step in and say, okay, you obviously can’t police yourselves, so we’re going to decide what movies you can make.”

  “So the studio would go to great lengths to cover up a scandal?”

  “Absolutely. I’ve heard that the dossiers Rhodes keeps on people would put Stalin’s secret police to shame.”

  “What does he use them for?”

  Max gave a sick grin. “He doesn’t. They’re his insurance that the stars behave.”

  The security chief was behind closed doors on a telephone conference when they arrived. Twenty minutes passed. The secretary apologized for the delay. After a half hour, Max grew annoyed. “I’ve got a picture coming out in January,” he fumed, “and I can’t waste time like this.”

  When the door finally opened, Lily was surprised to see the man who had sidled around the desk in David O. Selznick’s office asking questions. She could tell he recognized her too. Lily recalled an old OSS saying: if caught, stick as close to the truth as possible.

  “Haven’t I seen you before, Miss…?”

  “Kessler,” Lily said.

  “That’s right.” Frank Rhodes smiled. “In David’s office. And now you’ve popped up again like a bad penny. Why are you nosing around asking questions and churning the gossip mill?”

  “I’m a friend of Kitty’s family in Illinois,” Lily said. “We’re just trying to get some basic information…”

  “Max, how did this woman get on the lot?”

  “She’s visiting me.”

  “I wasn’t trying to cause trouble.”

  “I won’t have you dragging this dead actress through the mud. We at RKO stand for decency and good clean entertainment. The last thing we need is a scandal.”

  “Has there been any suggestion of a scandal?” Lily asked.

  “Of course not. But you can’t just come here and harangue people. You’re not with the police. You’re not a family member. You’re nothing but a troublemaker. Max, I’m banning her from the lot.”

  “I’m sorry for the disturbance,” Lily said, “but perhaps you could tell me what your security man found when he searched Kitty’s room.”

  Rhodes’s eyes were flat and distant. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “His name was Clarence Fletcher. He showed the landlady an RKO card.”

  “The police already asked me about that. We don’t have anyone here by that name.”

  “So someone impersonated an RKO employee to gain access to Kitty’s room?”

  Rhodes checked his watch. He looked impatient to have them gone. “I don’t know.”

  The secretary popped her head in. “Mr. Rhodes, your stepson called to cancel lunch.”

  A look of aggravation crossed the security chief’s face. Lily imagined an insouciant young man with a peeling nose and white flannel pants, holding a tennis racket. Hollywood’s Golden Youth.

  “Call him back and tell him he’s got twenty minutes to get here or he won’t see his allowance this month.”

  The secretary withdrew.

  “What if this fake RKO fellow was the murderer?” Lily continued stubbornly.

  “Then the police will catch him and the landlady will identify him,” Rhodes said. “One hates to speak ill of the dead, but Miss Hayden wasn’t too choosy about the company she kept.”

  So much for not dragging his actress through the mud.

  “What do you mean?” Lily feigned innocence.

  “She consorted with gangsters, Miss Kessler. And there’s a gang war under way in this town right now. Max, tell her what I’m talking about, will ya?”

  He pressed a button and the secretary appeared to herd them out. As the door closed behind them, they heard Rhodes get on the phone, but his voice was too muffled to make out.

  They picked their way through a group of vestal virgins marching toward a Roman temple. At the studio gates, Max waved to the guard.

  “How’s it going, Charlie?”

  “That’s a hell of a ‘special effect’ you got there, Max. Good day, miss.” The guard doffed his hat. “Say, my son’s a nut for those movies of yours. Spends all his spare time sketching dinosaurs and giant apes. Any chance I could bring him around one afternoon?”

  “Sure thing, Charlie. Be delighted.”

  Max turned to Lily. “Where are you going now?”
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br />   “An errand,” she said, thinking of the address the makeup girl had given her.

  CHAPTER 15

  This is the street,” Gadge said as they turned onto Morton Street. “I’m sure.”

  Harry’s voice rose in exasperation. “You were sure last time too. And the time before that.”

  “I remember that dry cleaner’s. There was a cat in the window.”

  Shaking his head and muttering about snipe hunts, Harry parked and they set off along the sycamore-lined street.

  He’d spent most of the previous day chasing photos for the Florence Kwitney murder investigation and they’d run out of light before Gadge could show him where he’d found the shoe. Today he swore not to rest until he had some answers.

  They’d started at home this morning, trying to pin down exactly which day Gadge had made his discovery. The kid didn’t know, but he produced a copy of Treasure Island that he’d checked out of the library the same day.

  “Jesus Christ, kid.” Harry chuckled. “You don’t have a roof over your head, but you’ve got a library card. If that don’t beat all. How long they let you take books out for these days?”

  “Two weeks.”

  “God bless Andrew Carnegie and his libraries. So we count back from the due date.”

  The card was stamped OCT. 22, so they subtracted fourteen days, which meant Gadge had found the shoe early on the morning of October 8. The papers said no one had seen Kitty Hayden since the evening of October 7. Harry had a hunch she’d been abducted and killed that night. Possibly from this very street.

  Now they scanned the sidewalks, gutters, and vacant lots for any evidence to support their theory. The Santa Anas had shaken loose the season’s first leaves, making a brown carpet that crunched underfoot. How the heck were you supposed to find anything under all that? Harry thought, kicking the leaves and feeling melancholy at this annual reminder that all things die.

  A hundred yards below Hollywood Boulevard, they came to a row of tidy shops.